


Time on Patrol

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 20:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10997955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: After finishing Police Academy, Blair chooses to spend a few weeks on Patrol before joining Major Crime





	Time on Patrol

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'monitor'

Time on Patrol

  
by Bluewolf

  
Blair aced the academy.

  
Nobody in Major Crime was particularly surprised. Even though he was only expected to take firearms training because of his time spent as an observer, Blair chose to take the full course.

  
He could have walked straight into a detective's position, but he decided - with Jim's agreement - to do time with Patrol first.

  
Technically he was the junior cop in his car; his years as an observer counted towards his experience, but that was as an observer. However, when Leroy Hobson, the more experienced patrol cop and the usual driver, hurt his right wrist half-way through Blair's second week, Captain Waterford had no qualms about letting Blair take over as driver while Leroy was restricted to light duty. He could go out in the car, but Blair was the one who wrote the reports, etc, even if Leroy gave the final approval of them.

  
In some ways Blair was surprised about getting that much responsibility, but as they left Waterford's office for the garage Leroy simply grinned and said, "Blair, we know. Ellison was never particularly careful about people seeing what he could do. We realized he had to have a good reason for keeping everything secret - and when the Press got hold of the story... well, it gave us a good idea of what that reason was. And Blair - we all respected you for what you did. No, none of us are going to embarrass you by talking about it - just know you'll never had a problem with back-up. You've been a bit worried about that, haven't you?"

  
"A little," Blair admitted as they entered the garage.

  
"Well, you can put that out of your mind."

  
"Thanks," Blair whispered.

  
"Now," Leroy went on, "Our job today is to monitor traffic. There have been reports of quite a lot of cars - well above the speed limit - on Seattle Road. I have a speed gun. Obviously nobody will bother about anything that's just a mile, two miles an hour over the limit. They aren't a problem; they're at least trying to stick to the limit. It's the ones coming in exceeding the speed limit, who aren't making any attempt to slow down when they drive in that are the bother."

  
Blair nodded. Leroy wasn't telling him anything he didn't know.

  
"So we're not taking our usual car; we'll be in an unmarked one." He stopped. "This one." He grinned and tossed the keys to Blair.  
Unprepared, Blair fumbled the catch, nearly dropped the keys then caught them again.

  
Leroy chuckled. "Good catch!"

  
They got in and set off.

  
***

  
It took about twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of Cascade. Blair parked outside a house about a hundred yards from the delimit sign; it was a straight stretch of road with a sharp left bend just before the sign - a perfect design to slow down traffic driving into Cascade.  
Leroy reached down, opened a box at his feet and took out the speed gun. "Lucky I'm left-handed," he chuckled, "and lucky this is light enough to use with one hand!"

  
The first two or three cars to drive past were obviously obeying the limit but the next one came around the corner at speed; Leroy caught it on the camera. It was only the first of several, and then a car in a hideous shade of green came up from behind them obviously going far too fast. It swerved around them, going much wider than necessary, then swung back to its own side to avoid an oncoming car, overcompensated as Leroy caught it on the camera... and bumped onto the sidewalk, clipped a child who looked to be about four who was walking along with - presumably - his mother, and sped on without even slowing at all. Leroy dropped the camera and jumped out of the car, and as he slammed the door shut Blair switched on the ignition, checked the road behind him and took off in pursuit.

  
Leroy drew a deep breath. From what he knew of Detective Ellison, that was the sort of thing he would do, and of course most of Blair's experience came from riding with Ellison. As he ran towards the child, whose mother was now kneeling beside him, Leroy pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Dispatch.

  
He called in the accident - the child would certainly need to be checked out - then added, "My partner is pursuing the car involved."  
There was a split second of silence. "Sandburg?"

  
"Sandburg."

  
"I think... It'd be wise to let Ellison know. I'll do it."

  
Leroy grinned, albeit somewhat uneasily. That would have been his next call; Dispatch was saving him the hassle of dealing with Ellison. Though how Ellison would react would ultimately depend on whether or not Blair was hurt. And Leroy would only hope, somewhat desperately, that his partner wasn't hurt.

  
***

  
Blair made no attempt to catch up with the speeding car; it took him a minute to reach a point where he could see it, then held his position about two hundred yards behind it. It was rather faster than he was happy with driving, and he could only wonder at the mentality of anyone who drove that fast from choice.

  
He wasn't actually sure what he planned on doing when the speeding driver stopped. He just knew that he had to keep the car in sight.  
There was a very sharp right hand bend on the road about ten miles from Cascade, and already they were getting very close to it. Blair eased his foot off the accelerator - no way was he going to risk driving into that corner at a hundred miles an hour!

  
And then the car clipped the verge; the right hand wheels lifted, the car landed on its left side and slid across the road leaving behind a trail of broken glass. An oncoming car swerved to avoid it, and it ended up crumpled against a tree.

  
Blair signalled and pulled over, stopping in front of the oncoming car whose white-faced driver was already scrambling out. Blair joined him. The driver of the crashed car, held in place by his seat belt, was lying motionless. A pool of blood was already beginning to gather, and Blair knew that he had undoubtedly been badly grazed, if nothing else, by his contact with the ground.

  
Blair pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial that would give him Dispatch.

  
'What is your emergency?'

  
"Sandburg. I've been in pursuit of a speeding car that hit a child on the outskirts of Cascade, on Seattle Road, a few minutes ago. He's crashed and we'll need an ambulance. I haven't been able to ascertain the driver's condition - can't get into the car - but he's bleeding and not moving. The car is lying on its left hand side."

  
'Where exactly are you?'

  
"It's that bad right hand bend about ten miles from Cascade on the Seattle road."

  
'I'll get an ambulance and another patrol car to you right away.'

  
Blair rang off and turned his immediate attention to the driver who had so nearly been involved in the crash. "You all right, sir?"

  
"Yes - I saw him just in time to brake... You a cop?" as he registered Blair's uniform.

  
"Yes," Blair said.

  
By then two more cars had stopped and the drivers had joined them; all the other cars that approached drove on since there were already people stopped - and one was in police uniform although there wasn't a police car there.

  
"Give me a leg up, will you?" Blair asked, and was promptly helped to climb up onto the undamaged side of the car. He pulled the door open, then using the side of the driver's seat as a step, scrambled down to check the man.

  
Yes... alive but, as far as Blair could see, with much of the flesh scraped off his face and upper left arm by contact with the road. It would be surprising if the arm wasn't also broken.

  
Blair scrambled out. "He's alive, but - " He stopped as he saw the additional man standing beside the car. "Jim?"

  
"Dispatch let me know you were chasing a speeding driver."

  
"And here he is," Blair said. "He tried to take this corner far too fast."

  
"Obviously doesn't know this road," Jim muttered. "You've reported it, of course?"

  
"Yes. There's nothing I can do for the guy - he's hurt worse than any of my first aid training allows for, and even you - you don't have an extensive enough first aid kit. Better to leave him till the ambulance gets here."

  
Jim looked at the trail of glass that crossed the road, noting blood. "He's torn a lot of skin off?"

  
"Not just skin. Flesh too. It's as well he's unconscious. Any idea how the kid he hit is?"

  
"Shaken, but not badly hurt."

  
"Thank goodness for that." He saw Jim's head tilting slightly. "Ambulance coming?" he asked softly.

  
"Yes." Jim glanced at the three men and one woman standing near them. "How many of you actually saw what happened?"

  
The driver of the car heading towards Cascade raised his hand. "I nearly ran into him."

  
One of the others said, "I saw it, but I was a fair distance away. But I can confirm he was going far too fast for the road."

  
"We didn't see anything," the woman said. "We're going to Cascade and didn't see anything for the bend in the road. When we arrived everyone else here was stopped; but I stopped too in case there was anything I could do."

  
"And thank you for that," Blair said. "But I think you can go on." He tilted his head. "I think I hear a siren - it's probably the ambulance. They'll have the gear to get him out."

  
The woman nodded, and she and the youngest man went to one of the stopped cars and got in. They were just driving off when the ambulance pulled up. A patrol car arrived less than a minute later.

  
***

  
It was nearly an hour before the EMTs got the injured man out of his car and into the ambulance. During that time the two civilians gave their evidence and were allowed to go on, and Blair and Jim were left with Officers Dent and Gowan. Blair grinned a little sheepishly. "Jim wasn't involved in this at all - he came chasing after me when Dispatch let him know what was happening. I'm not even sure why I took off after the guy... we'd caught him on the speed camera going well above the speed limit so we had a record of his number; he'd swerved onto the sidewalk and hit a kid, and just carried on. Officer Hobson went to see to the kid, and I... well, I was driving, and I just took off after the car. All I did was keep him in sight; I knew he'd have to stop eventually and I reckoned I could arrest him then. He went into the corner doing close on a hundred miles an hour, hit the verge and flipped the car onto its side. I'd already been easing off - "

  
"Did he know he was being followed by a cop?" Dent asked.

  
"I'm pretty sure he didn't. I was maintaining his speed but staying at least two hundred yards behind him, and the car's an unmarked because Hobson and I were monitoring speed close to the limit sign. At that distance, I doubt he recognized my car as the one he passed just before he hit the kid. No, I think he was just enjoying driving fast."

  
"Going after him alone was still silly, Chief," Jim said.

  
"It's the sort of thing you'd do," Blair said.

  
Jim gave a half grin. "Don't do as I do," he said. "I'm a bad example, and I know it."


End file.
